Twenty years ago, I was dancing on an iceberg in Club Penguin and raising Neopets like they were my actual children. (Hope they’re still alive… It’s been a while.)
When I logged on, my parents didn’t flinch.
This week, YouTube was added to the government’s under-16 social media ban, set to roll out in December.
It hit me just how much darker the internet has become since I was a preteen online.
I was part of the first generation to really sink its teeth into the internet.
We knew the internet before it got weird
The dial-up tone? That was the soundtrack to my digital coming-of-age.
It started with dressing up dolls on Barbie.com and carefully curating my Top Friends on MySpace.
Then came the emotional warfare of Bebo. Choosing who got my heart for the day was true pressure.
What lyrics to post on my MSN status so my year six crush would notice? (If you’re reading this, Lucas, that Paramore line was 100% about you.)
“Didn’t you spend all day talking to these kids at school?” my mom would ask, confused, as I typed away on MSN until dinner.
It was unregulated, yet somehow it felt safer.
The worst threat was a chain email saying you’d die if you didn’t forward it.
Perhaps we didn’t understand it. Or perhaps we let the technology advance faster than we could legislate it.
Of course, it wasn’t really safe back then either. There were definitely corners of the internet that should’ve come with warning signs.
Habbo Hotel, I’m looking at you. Then of course there was Omegle: the wild west of internet chat platforms.
Overall, we had no parental controls. Just dial-up and vibes.
Now it’s algorithms, AI, and predators with burner accounts. Anonymous strangers can reach your child in two taps.
Two taps away from trouble
Private information isn’t private. The pixelated penguins? They’re extinct.
We were the internet kids. Now we’re the terrified parents.
We read every parental warning, check app settings, install screen-time blockers, and nervously Google at 11 pm. We know too much now.
The stories of grooming in games we thought were harmless. The rabbit holes that spiral into something terrifying. The filters shaping how impressionable teens see their faces.
The TikTok algorithms are dishing out deadly challenges. Nothing like the ice buckets or cinnamon spoons we once thought were wild.
We’re parenting in a world we helped build, but no longer recognize.
Trying to guide kids through it feels harder than anything our parents faced.
Even as a new mom, I was overwhelmed, drowning in TikTok advice, backstroking through toxic Facebook mom groups, wondering how much quieter it would be if I could just unplug.
Government regulation is needed. But a blanket ban might be the equivalent of a digital Band-Aid.
Who knows if it will actually stop the bleeding?
I miss the internet that raised me. But I love the child I’m raising more.
We can’t bring back the penguins. But maybe we can help raise a generation that knows how to swim in the deep end of the internet. We’ve seen way too many sink.
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